About a year or so ago I installed a program mvt4apl on my Ubuntu 16.04 desktop. It is a program that allows you to run the original IBM 360 software for the APL language on a PC. This installation was smooth and worked. Unzip two packages into specific directories, install a font, verify that you are using a US-English keyboard and run a script. OK, for a variety of reasons I recently switched to Debian 8.7.1 installed from cinnamon live cd. Tried the exact same install procedure and get to the APL login page (after 2000 lines of installation jargon in Klingonese). As you may know, APL uses a nonstandard keyboard layout and several nonstandard characters; none of these work. I searched the installation output for words like "fatal", "error", "missing" etc. I did find several instances of this line:

What I would do is also try to find a forum or support board, for this program mvt4apl . And hopefully maybe you will find some one that as had experiencewith installing it on Debian, There might be someone here as well, so no problem asking here. The thing of it is , just because it worked on ubuntu, does not mean it would on Debian.

skippylou>>I've been using various versions of linux for over 10 year----

When I first started using Debian, and that was back when it was Debian 6 "squeeze", similar to you , I had been using other linux distros for over 10 years,and I still am very much a novice, but any way, the point is, there was a programI had wanted to use, but was not in the Debian repositories, and so I figured I could just get it from the site where they have it, and install it,...WRONG, it crashed my first Debian installation , so I had to start over,... I had not yet readthe above information on the wiki, so I did not realize the potential risk in installing something from outside the Debian repos,.. This does not mean you can not install it, but you will need to really research it first. You might find a program that does the same thing in the Debian repositories ,that would be your best option. I have not yet had a chance to do any searches, or look for information on this program, it might help if you can tell us where you got it, what version, etc.

----disclaimer--- In case some of the resident trolls decide to tell me "If you don't know the answer, don't post",.... Yes I am all ready aware of that, but the trolls don't make the rules, and I enjoy responding to peoples questions. ----------------------------------------------------

after 10 days I finally got around to compile some detailed answersfor you. The documentation coming with either the A+ sources, theDebian packages, or the aplusdev.org web site are indeed very poorin this respect.

Once you have things set up properly, "Alt+i" will give you the iota etc.

Here are all the gory details:--------- snip------

I don't know for sure, but it may be of use to you, and also that might be a very good place to ask about this, it can't hurt to ask on various sites.------------ edited-----------There may be some good alternative packages for Debian, in the Debian repos:https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/AplInDebian

Disclaimer: This is a Work-in-Progress page.

Apl comes under Debian under the Aplus packages. These supposedly work under xemacs or the shell.